[Thursday, 31st] One way to keep track of whether the BBC is showing a new programme or a repeat is to look out for characters who have been killed off. The lady hosting the Dax symbiont in Deep Space Nine [Past Tense, Part 1, 18:00, BBC 2] is a good marker. Her appearance confirmed that this two-parter about time travel is just another repeat. Right after it, Buffy, the Vampire Slayer [Choices, 18:45, BBC 2] bowed out at the end of her second series after the headmaster - played by Quark out of Deep Space Nine - learned the awful truth about the Sunnydale's indestructable, 100-year-old mayor. "Why couldn't you be dealing drugs like normal people?" the un-headed Ferengi protested plaintively on discovering that the mayor's sinister box contained fifty million (or was it fifty billion?) leapy, spidery, chew-yer-face-off things.
The opening sequence to the full repeat of the WWF's Summerslam [22:00, Sky Sports 1] by "Freddie Fellini" was a brilliant idea and an excellent start to the broadcast. No J.R.'s Barbeque Sauce posters were visible in the opening sequence in the hall in North Carolina, though. The Right To Censor crew opened up the bill against Rikish and Too Cool, who brought a couple of Ho's [ladies of doubtful virtue] with them to bug the Pimp Daddy Godfather turned Goodfather. The brawl was won from a Stevie Kick by Stevie Richards, administered as Scotty Too Hotty was in the middle of doing The Worm (loud cries of "Shame! Shame!") and there was no bumphrey for the pompous Stevie from Rikishi.
The Road Dogg [the one with the world's worst haircut] and X-Pac [who likes to stick his tongue out] probably did more actual wrestling in this one match than they manage in a whole year of non-pay-per-view stuff. Won by X-Pac, who was then decked by the Road Dogg in a typical WWF sore-loser burst of bad temper. Eddie Guerrero and Chyna [The Ninth Wonder of the World] then took on Val Venis and Trash Stratos with the Intercontinental Championship at stake. Much mayhem and Chyna murdered Trash in the end to win the belt.
Tazz versus Jerry 'The King' Lawler, a manufactured confrontation between a wrestler with nothing much going for him and a commentator, was always going to be a crude brawl. In the end, J.R. [the other commentator] bashed Tazz on the back of the head with his sweetie jar and his co-commentator pinned the self-styled thug. The match between Shane McMahon [the boss's son and the holder] and Steve 'Lethal Weapon' Blackman for the Hardcore Championship involved kendo sticks, very fragile dustbins, dustbin lids, fighting sticks, road signs and anything else that came to hand - including a typical WWF run-in by Test and Albert to make the odds three to one against Blackman. The match was won in spectacular style when Blackman chased Shane up one of the framework towers supporting part of the set, Shane plunged off and Blackman jumped on him from a great height. J.R., the commentator, wanted us to believe that Shane's plunge of 15-20 feet was a huge seventy feet, suggesting that he needs a pair of specs. But it was probably just another WWF myth-in-the-making.
The match between Chris 'The Canadian Crappler' Benoit and Chris 'Y2J' Jericho was an unusual best-of-three-falls affair. Predictably, each got a fall with his signature move - the Crappler Crossface and the Walls of Jericho respectively and in that order - then Benoit 'won' in a typical WWF swindle by using the ropes for extra leverage while the referee took care to see nothing.
The TLC match [tables, ladders and chairs] for the Tag-Team Championship pitted champions Edge & Christian against the Dudley Boyz [in their bloodstained battledress] and the Hardy Boyz. Everyone was totally decimated (sic) during the general mayhem, tables were slaughtered freely and Edge & Christian retained their belts. Next up was a novelty thong-bumphrey match between the Kat and Terri, two tiny ladies who did quite well on their enormous heels. Won by the Kat, if anyone cares.
Kane versus The Undertaker was a manufactured bill-filler, which included the brothers bashing each other with steel chairs and the top part of the steel ring steps, and Kane staggering out of the arena unmasked!!! And then we got to the big one!
The Rock versus Triple H versus Kurt Angle for the WWF Championship began with HHH and Kurt beating hell out of each other while 'The Great One' stayed away. An attempt to perform The Pedigree, HHH's signature move, on Kurt on the announcer's table was thwarted when the table collapsed while HHH was setting things up. Not that this minor mishap prevented the commentators from continuing with their scripts as if it had actually happened!
Kurt Angle was loaded onto a hospital trolley and wheeled away; only for HHH to rush after the medics so that he could bash Kurt a bit more. Then it was The Rock versus HHH with lots of predictable skull-duggery, including assaults with the championship belt and a sledge hammer. Towards the end, Stephanie, HHH's wife, persuaded Kurt to leave his trolly and go and help her husband against The Rock. In the meantime, HHH managed to pin The Rock, but Kurt just pulled him off and bashed him into the ring steps. In the final episode of mayhem, HHH managed to lay out Stephanie in the ring, Kurt laid out HHH with the sledge hammer, The Rock knocked Kurt out of the ring and then he applied The People's Elbow to HHH, pinned him and retained his championship. Phew!
And the conclusion: a pretty excellent script-writing job all round but with so many people getting wiped out in the general mayhem, who are they going to find to do anything but jaw, jaw on Raw Is War on Friday?
[Monday, 27th - the last bank holiday of the year!] The thing about The Time Team [1:00 & 19:00, Channel 4] is that their current investigation is always totally brilliant and full of fantastic finds. And yet the next one always manages to top it. The bank holiday extravaganza in Canterbury seemed to raise more questions than it answered but it wasn't a bad effort for three and a bit days' work.
"So, Mr. Bond!" [For Your Eyes Only, 17:10. ITV] Having seen the film lots of times before, I watched only a token half hour or so before the second Time Team chunk. It was more than enough for a lot of shootin', blowin' up and writing off of minor characters. And I left just as Mr. Bond was about to climb up the huge chunk of rock in Greece to the monastery on top.
The Best of Tommy Cooper [22:00, ITV] is more, typical bank-holiday far but it remains watchable again and again. BBC 2's Roman Day turned out to be just an excuse to fill up the schedule with old films - The Robe and Spartacus and repeats, in line with the BBC's philosophy of never showing a programme when they can show a repeat. In fact, Gladiators, The Brutal Truth [21:00, BBC 2] was about the only original programme in the whole sequence. Terry Jones' exploration of the details of gladiatorial life was intercut with modern bull fighting episodes and included the man himself, clad in a mini-tunic and looking like something out of a Python film, doing a bit with a dirty big sword against a tree-trunk stuck pole-like in the ground.
The welcome return of David Blaine [Magic Man, 22:00, Channel 4] was an interesting contrast to the Tommy Cooper show. Mr. Blaine specializes in blowing people's minds by doing the impossible on a regular basis. Tonight, he was doing it across the USA before heading for Haiti and the deep jungle of South America, where he had to find an alternative to card tricks as the people of the forest had no idea what playing cards were all about.
[Sunday, 26th] The Belgian Grand Prix [12:15, ITV] had an unusual beginning because the track was very wet. The safety car took the field round on a substitute for the parade lap to make sure that there wan't a huge pile up at the first corner after a conventional start. The grid line-up was also somewhat unusual with Mik Hakk on pole followed by the relative newcomers Trulli and Button ahead of the Forces of Evil Schumacher then Coulthard.
Trulli was out very quickly - nudged from behind by Button, spun and stalled - and the Forces of Evil was up to second place. Coulthard's race was ruined by his team's rotten tyre-change tactics when the track was dry enough for a change to dry-weather grooved tyres and he dropped from third to ninth. Hakkinen lost the lead by going into a spin and it looked very much like he'd blown the race. But in the final stint after the second tyre-changes, he started to gain on the leader and caught right up to him. And then he pulled off a superb overtaking move to take back what he'd thrown away in the first place. Schumacher went on the outside of Zonta, Hakkinen went to the inside, on the wet side of the track and off the racing line, and zoomed past both of them. And then it was follow my leader to the chequered flag. Coulthard finished fourth eventually, sandwiched between the Williams cars of Ralf Schumacher and Button. Frentzen picked up the final point. Barrichello won't be very pleased with the Ferrari team after running out of fuel - in the pit lane! but too far away from the garage for his mechanics to push him.
Next stop was to have been the Time Team [15:45, Channel 4] followed by WWF Heat, [17:00, Channel 4]. But the useless sods put boring old cricket on instead - and kept it on when it should have been obvious even to a Channel 4 programme manager that the rain wasn't going to let up. A slow death with excruciating torture would be much too good for the lot of them. And when you ring up to complain, what happens? The number's either permanently engaged or it rings and rings, and no one answers. Not good enough, Channel 4. Not by a long chalk.
Mr. Thunderbirds [20:00, Channel 5] was a fascinating trip through the ups and downs in the life of Gerry Anderson, the man who brought us International Rescue, Fireball XL5, UFO, Space 1999 and much, much more. Next up on the Channel 5 "Sci-fi Weekend", which lasted all of eleven hours, was Them! [21:00, Channel 5]. No, not the 1950s black-and-white film with the giant ants. This was a 1995 alien invasion epic with horrible monsters from elsewhere shoving evil little worms in people's ears to rot their brains and subjugate them. The plot idea, if anyone cares, was that the alien race had lost DNA necessary for its survival, and it wanted to use the Earth as a DNA ranch. Everything got blown up in the end but there was a hook which suggested that the film was the pilot of a TV series - one that never got made or one which has yet to grace TV screens in the UK.
[Saturday, 26th] The power-boating Grand Prix at Oslo [1:00, Sky Sports 2] provided a convincing argument for not showing dangerous events of this type live - apart from removing the sameness of a load of boats hurtling round a series of marker buoys. One of the boats flipped right over and broke in half, ending upside down with the on-board camera and the crew compartment submerged. Knowing that both crew members got out of the wreck and were uninjured, the programme-maker was able to include a whole series of action replays without crossling the border into bad taste.
[Friday, 25th] What does Tony Robinson look like! with his bleached skinhead haircut and those long shorts? The first bite of the latest event from the Time Team [18:00, Channel 4] needed two more presenters to keep up with the demands of covering a vast site in Canterbury. I hope they find something worth all the effort.
Wow, gosh! We actually saw some wrestling on World Championship Wrestling Worldwide [19:00, Channel 5] A new face called Skip Over gave Kidman more than a run for his money before submitting to inevitable defeat by the senior man. Hey, WWF [Raw, 22:00, Sky Sports 1], why can't you have people like Skip on your roster? Okay, there's Essa Rios, but you don't see him any more. And Dean Malenko, The Man of a Thousand Holds seems to be under contract not to use too many of them.
The WWF shows could do with a lot of pruning and some new ideas to make them move along a bit. More or less every match seems to be following the same script - two guys face up to each other then a third guy runs in and starts whacking his enemy of the moment over the head with a steel chair. Full of variety, it ain't! Although it came as quite a surprise to see Stephanie McMahon, the boss's daughter, actually lose the Women's Championship Belt, which she has been dragging around like a piece of oversize costume jewellery since the beginning of the year.
The first episode of The Bill's new three-parter [Lullaby, 20:00, ITV] painted an interesting picture of the Metropolitan Police. At the slightest sign of trouble, uniformed and CID inspectors alike go into panic mode and start having a go at their subordinates, which must do wonders for their working relationship. If there is the slightest chance that a racial aspect can be worked into an incident, it must be worked up to prove that the Met is doing something about racialism. And also, racialist attitudes from a minority group may be ignored as it seems to be the duty of the majority to have a broad back. I doubt very much whether anyone in The Bill will point out that this sort of attitude trivializes the race issue and makes life even harder for the victims of serious racially inspired attacks - but one can live in hope.
[Wednesday, 23rd] The cat managed to sleep through most of Blast [21:00, Channel 5], a film which got one whole star and a triangle in the Daily Mail weekend magazine. And then he decided that he wanted a drink of water just when we got to the exciting bit at the end - the old exploding wheelchair trick as a means of taking out the main bad guy. And after his drink, he went out for a prowl, not at all bothered by all the fun he'd missed on TV.
[Tuesday, 22nd] Tonight's helping of The Bill [Doppelgänger, 21:00, ITV] was very much in the spirit of Prime Suspect V [repeated 12-14 August]. Sergeant Boyden, the roguish one in uniform, was being impersonated and embarrassed by a trio of criminals. So in the end, when his team was about to pounce on the bad guys, he tipped off a pair of Yardies who broke the main bad guy's legs before they, too, were included in the general round of arrests. Nobody got killed, as in Prime Suspect, but getting one lot of bad guys to knock lumps off another lot is certainly an interesting direction for modern policing to take.
[Sunday, 20th] Wow! It's bloody Xmas again! Or it was on Martial Law [Sammo Claus, 20:00, Channel 5]. The hero of the series is a Chinese martial arts expert, who seems to have been in the US for a number of years. Even so, he still keeps expressing bafflement at American customs and sayings. He must a slow learner is he hasn't worked out that the rule in the good old US of A is "If it ain't weird, it ain't working!" Sammo, the scriptwriter would have us believe, doesn't even know what a Xmas tree is about!!!
Anyway, the episode was a rip-off of The Six Napoleons, the Sherlock Holmes story by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, and that much was obvious within the first five minutes. Still, we got a lot of martial artistry and general mayhem, and buckets of Xmas angst, and the bad guys got zapped in the end, so all was well with the world.
The World Wrestling Federation on the brain: in the early part of the Prom programme [22:50, BBC1], during the sea interludes from Peter Grimes, I was watching the conductor's antics and I suddenly thought; "He's going to do The Worm!" - which is a move invented by a sport entertainer called Scotty Too Hotty involving hopping about, wriggling across the ring on his belly and chopping a prone opponent. It would have caused a sensation at a serious Classical music concert if the conductor had done The Worm on the leader of the orchestra!
[Saturday, 19th] The edges at the WWF [22:00, Sky Sports 1] grow ever more ragged. According to the latest Ross Report from wwf.com, a lot of their "Superstars" are thinking of leaving and the injured list continues to grow. That's probably why a match between Eddie Guerrero and Val Venis has been a feature of every show recently, the time-wasting and replays of "moments ago" multiply relentlessly and few matches last more than a couple of minutes - mainly because an outsider does a run-in and breaks things up before the ailing competitors have to expend too much energy. No wonder J.R.'s weekly reports are taking on a note of increasing desperation.
All this clarifies the reason why Kane slammed his brother, The Undertaker, through the ring on Raw. It's the same reason for Taz having a go at the commentators. The list of injured and discontented is so long that the WWF is having trouble putting together a bill for their next pay-per-view event which will make people reach for their credit cards. So they're having to set up grudges between any two people who are still mobile and on-side as far as the corporate agenda is concerned.
A big part of the problem is the poor standard of scriptwriting. The grand finale of tonight's show was The Rock versus Triple H - with Shane and Steph McMahon removed from ring-side. So when the TV audience started wondering how Triple H could hope to win with no outside help, the answer became obvious: Kurt Angle would have to do a run-in and whack The Rock over the head with a steel chair. And wow! What a total surprise when this act of heinosity actually took place - not!
[Friday, 18th] How did Jeff Jarrett [WCW Worldwide, 19:00, Channel 5] get chosen to go round hitting people with a breakaway guitar and where do you apply for the job?
[Thursday, 17th] The Masters Blasters show [20:30, BBC2] has lost touch with reality. In fact, what we need is the colonel from Monty Python's to come on and tell them, "This sketch is getting silly!" This week's programme was a free advert for a firm which is launching satellites to establish a global mobile phone network. But launching rockets is all about burning fuels in a controlled manner. And if the whole thing explodes, well, that may look great as a TV image but it means someone has screwed up. The programme makers are clearly so totally short of inspiration and relevant material that they've been reduced to bunging any old thing in. And I can't wait to see what irrelevant load of tosh they shove in next week!
[Wednesday, 16th] I was surprised they didn't pull today's episode of the orginal version of Star Trek [Balance of Terror, 18:00, BBC2] and replace it with another one as it was a rip-off of all the wartime submarine films of that era and there's a Russian submarine stranded at the bottom of the sea right now. But I suppose no one at the Beeb has viewed that episode within living memory and no one knew that it had a high insensitivity quotient.
[Tuesday, 15th] The Mountie in Deep South [Some Like It Red, 18:45, BBC2] looked quite convincing in drag from a distance, not so much close up - but not totally unconvincing remembering that there are more than a few surgically re-gendered men wandering around. And his natural Canadian dignity and sense of purpose helped him to carry it off in a thoroughly professional manner.
The Bill [Time To Kill, 21:00, ITV] discovers the Internet and chat rooms. Not being involved in such things myself [chat rooms], I was struck by how dull the user interface is. Obviously requires a visit from some Computer Graphics Terrorists to liven it up. Anyway, bags of tension in the episode and in the end, Sergeant Ackland showed that she knows how to handle herself in a punch-up, which is what you'd expect from someone who's been in the Job as long as she has.
[Monday, 14th] Prime Suspect V [21:00, ITV] had a very cheap solution to the problem - shoot the bad guy to bits and don't waste a fortune on a trial and keeping him in gaol. Maybe we should get more of this cost-effective policing in real life.
[Sunday, 13th] The Hungarian Grand Prix [12:15, ITV] began with Michael The Forces of Evil Schumacher in pole position with David Coulthard then Mikka Hakkinen looking at his back wing. Hakkinen, coming up from third on the grid, got ahead of the FoE at the first corner and zoomed off into the distance once he had got his eye in. Coulthard, who made a very sluggish start and nearly got overtaken by Ralf Schumacher, lost any chance of getting past the FoE via the pitstops thanks to being blocked by Gene and bad tactics by his team. Barrichello, Ralf Schumacher and Frenzten picked up the rest of the points. Hakkinen is now leading the driver's championship with a fair amount of racing still to come. No spectactular crashes, no spectacularly bad driving. All very processional, really. But at least the FoE didn't win.
[Friday, 11th] RAW Is War [21:30, Sky Sports 1] continues to bore us with crap plot lines before ending in an occasional blaze of glory, like this week's show. The lack of people fit to enter the wrestling ring continues the plague the WWF. Unfortunately, no one has managed yet to inflict terminal damage on X-Pac [the one who's good at sticking his tongue out] and the Road Dogg [the one with the world's worst haircut], and the idiot in the black hat - yes, I mean you, J.R. - continues to pretend they're the best tag-team in the whole history of the universe. Do they have the charisma of Too Cool? The arrogant fun of Edge & Christian? The high-flying of the Hardys? The popular menace of the Dudley Boyz? The authority of the APA? Of course not. Stop being such a Quisling, J.R. They're just a pair of house stooges - and I bet Scott Hudson and Living Legend Larry Zabisco of WCW wouldn't be afraid to say so.
[Thursday, 10th] It took a while to remember the repeated Sliders episode [Invasion, 18:00, BBC2], which was all about an invasion of sliding killer-ape descendants from an alternate Earth. Then I realized that it was the attempt to build in an inter-dimensional war as a way to go if the scriptwriters ran out of inspiration. In other words, an excuse for recycling plots from The Invaders, V, Stargate SG1 and all the others. Sneaky.
The Master Blaster this week [20:30, BBC2] was blowing up snow and ice instead of buildings. His big ideas were (1) to blow holes through icebergs so that oil companies could attach a tow line and move an iceberg away from an oil platform as an alternative to shutting down the platform and towing it away [rejected] and (2) a more efficient way of dislodging unstable snow structures before they became major avalanches [accepted, hooray!].
If Frank Burnside [21:00, ITV] has taken over The Bill's Thursday slot after making guest appearances at Sun Hill, how come he never invites his former colleagues onto his new show? Dead selfish, I call it.
[Wednesday, 9th] The week's episode of Buffy, the Vampire Slayer [Doppelgangland, 18:45, BBC2] was a good one. The all-leather vampire Willow was a great idea. And the ending was a nice touch: Vampire Willow gets back to a bar-room brawl in her own dimension, and she's just lighting up with joy when someone slams her back against a piece of splintered wood. And she starts to say, "Oh, frell!", but being Willow, she gets dusted just as she gets to the 'f'.
Pity they had to re-arrange the theme tune after the first series. Bringing the drums right forward has totally dumbed down a very dynamic arrangement. The person responsible should be shot on the spot; and certainly not fed to a vampire to be rewarded with life eternal.
Talking about people who should be shot, the Previously on Buffy, the Vampire Slayer section at the top of the programme was full of plot that we haven't seen, proving that the idiots at the Beeb have been showing the episodes in any old order and not making any attempt to follow their sequence. But what else is new? I can't decide whether the Beeb gets Channel Four's reject schedule arrangers or vice versa. Both lots seem equally crap.
[Tuesday, 8th] The Bill [No Man's Land, 21:00, ITV] had a very ingenious plot, which reminded me of Frederick Forsyth's The Day Of The Jackal, and took a good pop at the cowboy "don't care" culture of the younger CID officers. When it finished, I switched over to take in the last 40 minutes of Street Fighter [began 21:00, Channel 5], a film which received a single star and a diamond in the Daily Mail's Saturday magazine. Lots of mindless violence, things getting blown up and bad guys getting zapped in a cartoon-charactered drama, which included a flying nutcase main bad guy with electricity whizzing out of his body, and The Incredible Hulk's brother. Great fun!
[Monday, 7th] The evening film on Channel 5 [Sunday, 6th] There must have been something else on another side when Prime Suspect V [21:00, ITV] was first broadcast because it's new to me. Very watchable, but does anyone else get the feeling that Jane Tennison cruises round the nation's police forces looking for someone new with whom to have an inappropriate relationship?
[Saturday, 5th] Dark Knight [15:40, Channel 5] carries on the same fine job begun by The New Adventures of Robin Hood as far as educating the public about life in 12th Century England [Wretched the Lionheart, and all that] is concerned. This saga seems to be about a Richard III supporter with the Russian name of Ivan and his Ho. Ivan's enthusistic preference for King Richard over his brother, Prince John, suggests that Ivan never met one of England's worst kings, who spent about ten days in the country during his reign, and who was a total waste of space. [Friday, 4th] Friday night's "sports entertainment" features WCW Worldwide [19:00, Channel 5] and the WWF's Raw [22:00, Sky Sports 3]. The one-hour WCW show has all the plot stripped out and it's sometimes hard to bridge the gaps. The "superstars" just drop out of sight and you never know who's going to be a bad guy this week. But WWF's Raw struggles to fill up its two hours and having to put up with Triple H and his crew moaning on for twenty minutes is a bit much! [Wednesday, 2nd] Star Trek [18:00, BBC2] is practically a costume drama reflecting the attitudes and obsessions of the late Sixties. But it's still fun to watch Jim and the gang over-acting wildly and getting things right just in the nick of time. Inspector Frost [A Touch of Frost, Quarry, 20:00, ITV] is getting to be another dinosaur out of the same box as Inspector Morse. But he's still very watchable after a decent break to forget the plot.
[Tuesday, 1st] Strange the way programmes grow and shrink in the schedules. The Bill [21:00, ITV] used to be on practically every night of the week. Now, you're lucky to see one episode a week. I wonder how the cast are managing on the reduced wages.
The first 40 minutes of WWF's Smackdown [22:30, Sky Sports 1] was the pits! It was full of time-wasting, including Shane McMahon telling us that his gang is going to put everyone else on the injured list. But are we really supposed to believe that his Dad, Vince, would let him do that? Because it makes no business sense. After all, who's likely to tune in if all there is to watch is Shane ranting on and his team of three stooges wrestling one another? I think the WWF needs to sack their scriptwriter.
Another major difference is the quality of the ringside commentators. Scott Hudson and Larry the Living Legend Zabisco [apologies for a wrong spelling] call it like it is and if someone's been swindled, they say so. The characters on WWF are the biggest bunch of Quislings and toadies imaginable, especially Jerry "I can't believe it, J.R." Lawler, who's possibly the biggest idiot in the known universe.
"If the ref had one more eye, he'd be a Cyclops!" That's the quality of a WCW commentary and until the WWF gets some real people on their staff, they're always going to be trailing in WCW's dust.
One thing the WCW doesn't have is someone with the stature of Mick Foley, recently retired sports entertainer and Commissioner of the WWF. With Mick around, the fun factor in the WWF has escalated. But the mindless and largely pointless thuggery seems to be institutional.
[Thursday, 3rd] The Master Blasters [20:30, BBC2] finally got back to blowing up buildings after an excursion into fireworks last week. I always come away from that programme with a sense of having missed out. It's a potentially highly interesting and visual subject but there seems to be a lack of substance to the programmes.
Created for Clyde E. Wydey by Henry T. Smith Productions, 10/12 SK6 4EG, UK. Sole © Clyde E. Wydey, 2000. Optimized for Netscape Communicator 4.7. Other browsers may screw up page layouts & not show Javascript gadgets.